Davy

Actor Jason Schwartzman-- who, to be fair, was making music before he was making movies-- returns with another rewarding small-scale pop project, reminiscent of 60s British Invasion artists and 90s artists like Elliott Smith and Weezer who aped them.

Compared with other Hollywood actors moonlighting as musicians, say, Jared Leto or Juliette Lewis, Jason Schwartzman enjoys a fair amount of indie audience and critical goodwill. And unlike Scarlett Johansson or Zooey Deschanel, it's not in part cuz he's pretty. Nighttiming, Schwartzman's 2007 multi-instrument-playing debut as Coconut Records, didn't meet with rapturous Interpraise, but it wasn't pummeled with virtual fruit, either. Hey, dude's Max Fischer-- he gets a pass. And, unlike most of his thespian peers, Schwartzman has played in bands longer than he's acted in films. Remember the theme to that Fox teen drama everyone used to watch before they watched "Gossip Girl"? As Schwartzman deadpans on new Coconut Records album Davy, "I was a drummer in a band that you've heard of"-- or at least, heard. The other reason the guy gets a pass? He doesn't totally suck.

Yeah, so it's a shin-high bar. But even pitting Davy against similar small-scale pop projects, it's a credible effort, laying claim to several instantly likeable, catchy songs indebted to the one-off British invasion cuts favored by director pal Wes Anderson, Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's-era Beatles, and the artists who revived those sounds in the 90s, like Weezer, Elliott Smith and Matthew Sweet. At its weakest (second-half tracks "The Summer" and "I Am Young" tread Olympic-sized pools of water) the tunes are never worse than forgettable. There's little ego-tripping to hate on, either. Schwartzman's face graces the album's cover, but it's etched with spidery white lines like someone's used it as a scratch pad. And while Davy's lyrics are fed by a network of autobiographical arteries, this source material only fortifies the record's moderately angsty life-in-your-twenties concept with concrete, ground-level detail.

The aforementioned "I Was a Drummer" is probably Schwartzman at his most personal, but album opener "Microphone", with its pensive Elliott Smith-style acoustic guitar and piano arrangements and spot-on lyrics like "I know that you're not coming home/ There's nowhere to park after it gets dark," is the one destined to join "Heartless", "For Emma", and some Flight of the Conchords track on 2009 breakup mixes. "Saint Jerome"-- the album's best track-- pulses with "A Day in the Life"'s jaunty rhythms, and despite (or perhaps because of) Schwartzman's limited vocal range, its "Saint Jerome, I don't never ever want to be alone" chorus is less agonized lament than laid-back, sun-baked musing.

Coconut Records, in fact, never suggests that much is at stake, and Schwartzman doesn't pull any muscles attempting to articulate strong feelings. Songs like "Courtyard" and "Is This Sound Okay?" are only ever just a little bummed out. Schwartzman neither leverages nor squanders his celebrity capital with this project, seeming content to play a modest guy with a guitar and a handful of hooks.